Harold J. Laski

But it shows also the unwisdom of leaving the government free to determine the substance of the contract of service.

Their union, therefore, with persons in private firms seems to me justified in order to raise their general economic level; and I do not see the justice of prohibiting it as was done by the Baldwin Government in the Trades Disputes Act of…

And I draw your attention to the fact that although in each case the original strikers were defeated, their successors obtained the terms, and even more than the terms, for which they fought.

Here, certainly, the fact that the governments concerned were the judges in their own cause made it impossible for the police to get either attention or justice without drastic action.

To leave the executive sole master of the field is to invite the kind of purblind folly which resulted, in 1919, in the police strikes of Boston and London.

They should be made and administered in conjunction with those who are affected by them; and in their application or change executive action should not be the final court of appeal.

But it is important, in the framing of these regulations, that the conditions of service should be just.

The army and navy and the police, in particular, occupy a special position in the state; if they were free, like ordinary citizens, to withdraw their labour as they pleased, the executive power would be in an impossible position.

We know that Parliament is unlikely to do any of these things because omnicompetence, when gravely abused, ceases to be omnicompetent.

The latter, if it wished, has the legal competence to abolish the trade unions, to disenfranchise the working classes, to confine membership of the House of Commons to persons with an independent income.

But the trade unions are no more likely, on the historic record, to abuse their power than is Parliament itself.

It was, I think, an abuse of power when the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge refused to admit Nonconformists as students, or Parliament to seat Mr Bradlaugh because he was an infidel.

It was an abuse of power when British naval officers connived at the attempted internment of the Belgian socialist, M.

It is an abuse of power when the owners of halls in Boston refuse to hire them to the promoters of a meeting in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti.

It is an abuse of power when an employer dismisses his workmen because he does not like their political opinions.

The limitation of liberty in this realm seems to me, therefore, neither just in its purpose nor beneficent in its results.

Law in this realm is, in fact, largely futile.

Everything depends on what the general strike is for, just as everything depends on the purpose of the rebellion; and the individual trade unionist must make up his mind about the one, just as the individual citizen must make up his mind…

It is no more possible to take that view than it is to say that all governments deserve support when they confront a rebellion of their subjects.

A government which meets the threat of a general strike is not entitled to public support merely because it meets the threat.

Right and wrong in these matters are matters to be defined in each particular case.

Nor is the denial of the right to declare a general strike a necessary protection of the total interest of the community.

The secret of avoiding general strikes does not lie in their prohibition but in the achievement of the conditions which render them unnecessary.

And its relevance as just is made not by those who announce that it is to be applied, but by those who receive its application.

A legal command is, after all, a mere static form of words; what gives it appropriateness is its relevance as just to the situation to which it is applied.